I will make no apologies here
for the fact that this theory was
constructed on the basis of the mytho-historical record rather
than through astrophysical considerations. I will only say in
passing that, other than its mythological content, the mytho-
historical record also incorporates the world-wide astronomical
beliefs of our ancient forefathers, and that these beliefs
coincide with their mytho-religious convictions. Ancient
astronomical beliefs can therefore be considered together with
mythology as a unified whole regardless of the fact that what
comes to light in an in-depth research of such subjects ends up
describing a Solar System that was entirely alien to the one we
now inhabit.

Be that as it may, the
outlandishness of what my research was
uncovering made me disbelieve the entire thing and I must
honestly say that it was not until I had read Hamlet's Mill that
I finally accepted all that I had unearthed. If, as I reasoned at
the time, scholars of the caliber of Giorgio de Santillana and
Hertha von Dechend, the authors of Hamlet's Mill, had been able
to unearth the same set of bizarre situations, I could not be
that far off the mark myself.

Amy adds:
The full introduction can be found at the following SIS Silver
Jubilee website, and the full paper is scheduled to be published
early next year by the SIS Review.

CARDONA: What do I mean by 'demands'? Theories do not stand, if they
are to stand at all, in isolation. They raise certain demands. For
instance, the theory concerning the nuclear fueling of the Sun demands
that the Sun shed a vast amount of neutrinos. To date, only about one
third of the predicted amount have been detected. The theory concerning
the Big Bang demands a vast amount of matter that should be there. To
date, this so-called dark matter is still being looked for. These two
theories should not be allowed to stand, but because science is
optimistic in that it will eventually detect both the missing neutrinos
and the missing dark matter, they are ALLOWED to stand. Personally, I shall
not use similar optimism as a crutch. ... On the contrary, I aim
to present a series of demands which this theory raises, both
within itself as also through hard science, and how these can be
met. The list is not meant to be comprehensive, but it should
suffice to illustrate the significance and consequence of the
evidence. ... I neither have the space nor the time to deal with
all the planets that once constituted the Saturnian
configuration. I have therefore decided to concentrate on the
two most important bodies of the alignment - namely Saturn and
the earth itself. ...

THE AGE OF DARKNESS

My version of the Saturnian
scenario posits that man's earliest
memory of the sky above him was one in which the planet Saturn
was the only visible celestial body which was seen looming large
in the sky in an all-pervading darkness -- an endless night. One
of the most persistent of beliefs among the civilizations of the
ancient nations ... is that during a time usually remembered as
'the beginning' Earth had been engulfed in darkness. Time and
again ... we are told that 'in the beginning' there was no Sun,
no Moon, no stars.

AMY: Here Cardona supplies a sampling of the enormous number of myths
from every continent on earth which support this thesis of a
common beginning to all creation stories. He adds that this
darkness was primarily in the sky, but that it also affected the
earth below, with Saturn radiating feebly above, in the words of
the Linga Purana, 'like a glow-worm.'

CARDONA:
... keep in mind now that the Saturn theory posits that Saturn
and Earth shared the same axis of rotation, so that Saturn, at
this time the only luminary visible in the sky, was not seen to
rise and set, but remained ever visible, fixed to one spot in
Earth's north celestial sphere. Add to this the perpetual night
... and mankind would have been kept from being able to tell the
passage of time.

This, then, becomes one of the
theory's first demands, because,
if mankind was not able to tell the passage of time during this
period, the mytho-historical record itself should tell us as
much. Does it?

THE TIMELESS ERA

AMY: Cardona recounts many myths which not only explicitly claim that
time once did not exist, but others which refer to an era when
there was no time, and several in which the terms 'time' and
'year' and 'day' are strangely equivalent. He ends up recounting
the Chinese record of an age in which 'the day and night had not
yet been divided.'

CARDONA:
... the first demand raised by our interpretation of the mytho-
historical record is actually met by that same record ... [and]
the demand we have just seen being met raises another -- because,
since the record does treat of an era during which time did not
exist, it should also treat of a following era during which time
was recognized as having begun. Do we find such records among
the beliefs of the ancients?

THE BEGINNING OF TIME

Not only do such records
exist, but quite a few of them connect
the beginning of time directly with Saturn.

AMY: Here Cardona reveals a sampling of myths which both make
connections between Saturn and time and reveal Saturn as the
originator of time. He points out that conventional mythologists
have also noticed this connection, and have taken great pains to
explain it away.

CARDONA:
... as far back as 1875, attempts were being made to justify
the phenomenon by appealing to the planet's present lagging
orbital pace. ... However, slow as Saturn might move, it
MOVES, and, in that respect, it is no different than the other
planets. Besides, why would the BEGINNING of time be
associated with the planets solely because of its slow pace? Or,
better still, why would Saturn's sluggish amble have led to the
belief that time MUST have had a beginning -- that, at one
period of the ages, time did not exist?

Or why would Saturn have been
chosen to represent the year? If
any celestial body can presently claim the right to represent the
year, it surely would have been the Sun. ... our ancient
forebears ... would hardly have even noticed the planet Saturn if
it appeared , like now, as nothing but a pin point of light in
the night sky, let alone have noticed its slow advance across the
night sky.

THE SATURNIAN SUN

CARDONA:
One of the themes I wish to touch upon concerns the model's
prediction that Saturn had once shone as a virtual sun. More
than that, the model also posits that what past mythologists have
identified as a bevy of sun-gods - such as the Assyro-Babylonian
Shamash, the Egyptian Ra, the Indic Surya, the Greek Helios - are
actually misidentified Saturnian suns. In the case of Shamash,
of course, the issue is at once settled by appealing to those
very ancients who venerated the god. . . . despite the objection
of most modern mythologists, the case is really closed since the
Assyro-Babylonians themselves vouched for the identity of Shamash
as a name of the planet we call Saturn.

AMY: Cardona then discusses the identification of the Egyptian Ra with
the sun, an identification he personally found more difficult to
accept.

CARDONA:
And yet, here is precisely where the method I have been
expounding proved itself - because, if the theory demanded that
Ra was really a personification of Saturn rather than the Sun, it
should also demand that the characteristics and motions ascribed
to Ra will not be found to fit those of the Sun.

AMY: Quoting from Jastrow, Boll, Budge, and the Pyramid texts, CARDONA
describes the characteristics and motions of Ra, as a deity that
reigned within the Circles, then further identifies this Circle
as the "Duat" the "underworld", which, according to Budge, was
located "away beyond the earth, probably in the sky."

CARDONA:
It is thus obvious that, whatever Ra once signified, it was a
celestial body that resided within a circle or band or ring -
nay, within a nest of concentric circles or bands or rings. As
we all know, the Sun does not send forth its rays into a circle;
it does not reside in a ring or nest of rings. The planet
Saturn, however, does.

. . . under certain
conditions, the Sun is seen to be surrounded
by . . . atmospheric refraction which lends a halo to the solar
orb. But not only is this too rare an apparition to have earned
Ra his title of 'Governor of the Circle,' it is also a phenomenon
which is restricted to the northern regions and hardly, if ever,
seen at the latitude of Egypt. But there is more.

AMY: Cardona recounts the widespread and unusual belief by many
ancient cultures that Saturn was the "night sun" or the "sun of
night." Saturn was also remembered as a 'radiant green disk' and
Cardona quotes an Egyptian hymn which refer to Saturn's "beams of
emerald light."

CARDONA:
Consider further the motions of the celestial object called Ra.
In a statement found in one of the Coffin Texts, the deity is
addressed with these words: 'You shall go up upon the great West
side of the sky and go down upon the great East side of the
earth.' Is this not contrary to what the Sun does? Does the Sun
'go up' in the west? Does it 'go down' in the east? Thus
Faulkner, who translated this passage, could not help stating
that this 'unexpected reversal of the points of the compass is
incomprehensible' - and ended up by blaming what to him was an
inconsistency on 'a blunder in an early copy which no one has
noticed or at least attempted to correct.' This explanation,
however, presupposes that there must be other texts which give
the rising and setting of Ra correctly. But, as David Talbott
has indicated, "wherever the direction of the [sun] ship's
movement is explicitly connected with the phases of morning and
evening, the texts always reverse the direction expected by the
solar interpretation."

More than that, when sailing
in his ship, or boat, Ra is said to
move down at dawn, and 'upstream' at night contrary to what we
see the Sun doing in our sky. How, then, can mythologists
continue to perpetuate the lie that the Egyptian Ra was a
personification of the Sun?

[ed. note: the text of the
introduction to this paper is
available at http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/silver/cardona.htm
and the full text of the paper is scheduled for publishing in an
up-coming issue of Chronology and Catastrophism Review - see
http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/index.htm for more information.]

AMY ACHESON:
Part I of this paper recounted many of the unusual global
attributes of the planet/god Saturn as portrayed in mytho-
historical records from all over the world. Among these were
Saturn's connection with an age of darkness, Saturn as supreme
ruler of The Golden Age, Saturn's association with the beginning
of time, Saturn as motionless, Saturn as the sun and Saturn as
the sun of night. This section of the paper concluded with these
phrases concerning another unusual behavior of Saturn:

THE POLAR STATION

But hold on - someone may have
already noticed. If, as the model
assumes, Saturn appeared motionless in the earth's north
celestial sphere, how could it have been seen to rise and set,
even if contrary to the way the Sun does? This is a point that
troubled me for some time until, with Dave Talbott, I came to
realize that the fault lay with mythologists and not mythology.
Or, to state it more correctly, the fault lay with those who had
translated the ancient myths. Not that I blame them because,
after all, they only had the arrangement of the present sky to
work with. In short, when it comes to the Egyptian Ra, the terms
'rising' and 'setting' were actually mistranslations. If we were
to translate the Egyptian texts concerning Ra literally, and
forget about what the Sun is supposed to do, we find that the
light of the god is simply said to 'come forth' and 'recede'.
The god himself 'comes out' and 'goes in.'

Egyptologists, of course, will
claim that this was the way in
which the Egyptians alluded to the rising and setting of the Sun
- and, as I said, one cannot really blame them. But, as Talbott
noted, when we say today that the moon comes out at night, we do
not really mean that it rises, but that it grows bright. And so,
also, with Ra - the god did not rise and set; he simply grew
bright and dimmed. And this is vindicated by the additional fact
that the god was said to come forth and recede while remaining em
hetep, that is, 'at rest' or 'in one spot.'

And, in fact, it was this
immobility of Saturn, stated of the god
and of the planet, that made me realize very early in my
research, together with Talbott, but independent of him, that
Saturn once occupied a stable position in Earth's north celestial
sphere.

AMY: Cardona then quotes Assyro-Babylonian, Hebrew, and Egyptian
sources which translate the meaning of local names for Saturn as
'the steady planet' and 'the resting planet'. He speaks of
rituals in which Saturn is referred to as 'without motion' and
'without movement.' He quotes the Makiritare Indians of
Venezuela, 'Wanadi is like a sun that never sets.'

CARDONA:
. . .
If Ra was the Sun, as mythologists would have us believe,
why was it said to have been without movement?

Unless I am mistaken, there
are only two ways in which the planet
Saturn could have appeared suspended motionless in the sky
without rising and setting. The first, and most believable, is
to assume, as Lynn Rose has done, that Earth orbited Saturn in
phase-lock, very much as the Moon does in relation to Earth, thus
always pointing the same hemisphere toward Saturn.

AMY: The second way in which Saturn could have appeared suspended
motionless in the sky is if it were stationed at the celestial
pole. Cardona quotes from Egyptian, Chinese, Babylonian,
Iranian, and Celtic myths, a few of the many hundreds of
traditions which place Saturn in the north.

He quotes Lynn Rose in Lynn's
belief that after the phase-lock
era of Saturn came to a close, the ancients knew of no other
"immovable station of the sky" in which to place Saturn, so
universally revised their myths to locate Saturn at the pole.
Cardona also mentioned as a possibility David Talbott's
suggestion that Saturn may have moved from phase-lock to polar
station. Either way, Cardona says that the polar position of
Saturn is an integral part of global mythology.

CARDONA:
What is of additional importance, however, is the fact that the
record of the ancients does not describe this strange situation
always in the same manner, but, on the contrary, in a hundred
different ways which speaks against a diffusionist borrowing of
the belief.

Editor's Note:
The Saturn Theory is one which relies on information from many
fields, each adding a few ounces to the weight of evidence. In
the first two parts of this paper, Cardona has presented a small
fraction of the mytho-historical evidence. In the next sections,
he will discuss some of the physical evidence. For some of the
symbolic evidence, see Ev Cochrane's article at:
http://www.ames.net/aeon/Rock_Art/rock_art.html
For more about the linguistic evidence, see Dave Talbott's
articles, HOW CATASTROPHIC EVENTS GENERATE LANGUAGE, and
The
Mythic Roots of Language in THOTH III-14, III-15, and III-16.

[ed. note: the text of the
introduction to this paper is
available at http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/silver/cardona.htm
and the full text of the paper is scheduled for publishing in an
up-coming issue of Chronology and Catastrophism Review - see
http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/index.htm for more information.]

AMY ACHESON:
Part I of this paper recounted many of the unusual global
attributes of the planet/god Saturn as portrayed in mytho-
historical records from all over the world. Among these were
Saturn's connection with an age of darkness, Saturn as supreme
ruler of The Golden Age, Saturn's association with the beginning
of time, Saturn as motionless, Saturn as the sun and Saturn as
the sun of night.

Part II concerned the
postulate that the mytho-historical record
places Saturn at the Earth's north pole. Cardona stresses that
this information is not taken from a single story, but is
expressed in hundreds of different ways in hundreds of different
stories told over the world.

In part III, Cardona explores
the nature of this northern
configuration from both a mythical and physical perspective:

DWARDU CARDONA:

But what of the demands which
this postulate raises? Can they,
too, be met?

The postulate concerning the
former polar station of the planet
Saturn raises more than one demand, but I will only touch upon
one-and it will serve to show that physical requirements, as well
as those which the mytho-historical record itself answers, can be
met.

THE LITHIC BULGE

We all know how terrestrial
tides are raised; they are caused by
the attraction of the Sun and Moon on Earth's oceanic waters. . .

Now consider: With the massive
Saturn in proximity to Earth, the
tides that would have been raised should have exceeded those at
present. And since Earth's tides are aggravated when the
attractive force of the Moon is added to that of the Sun, it
stands to reason that the additional pull of Venus and Mars,
which the theory dictates to have been in direct line with Saturn
and Earth, should have raised the northern tide even more. More
than that, with Saturn having been positioned in Earth's north
celestial sphere, terrestrial tides should have accumulated at
Earth's north polar region. The hydrosphere, moreover, would not
have been the only terrestrial element to respond to Saturn's
attractive force. The atmosphere should also have piled up at
Earth's northern areas. And so, also, should have Earth's crust.
This, then is what the Saturnian thesis demands. Do we find it
so?

Well, let's be fair now. What
was, no longer is, so that we
cannot now take a trip up north to see if the water of the world
is actually piled up in a tide around the north pole. Earth's
crust, however, is a different mater. Earth's hydrosphere and
atmosphere would have easily-although not necessarily suddenly-
have rebounded to settle in a more uniform shell around the world
Earth's crust, on the other hand, would have taken a much longer
period to re-adjust to the new conditions. And since the scenario
we have been positing is theorized to have played its drama just
prior to the rise of civilization, we should expect this northern
lithic bulge not to have yet subsided.

AMY: Cardona discusses how this lithic bulge fits into several
theories of planetary catastrophism, including phase-lock
theories and theories involving planets other than Saturn.

CARDONA:
Is there any evidence of a remnant of such a tidal bulge in
Earth's north polar region?

Of course there is ... The
real shape of Earth ... is better
described as a triaxial spheroid rather than an oblate one, with
the bulge of its pearshape measured in meters rather than
kilometers. But as a residue, or remnant, of a former greater
uplift of land even meters are of significance. As Frederick Hall
asked:

"What pulled Earth out of
shape from above its north pole? The
small dimensions of this shift indicate the pull was short term
(as in centuries to millennia) rather than eons. Furthermore the
effect is relaxing, and in geological terms the distorting
influence must have been remarkably recent."

. . . Now it is true that
Earth's present pear-shape could be
explained through different causes than that proposed by the
Saturnian configuration theory. But that is not the issue now,
is it? What rightly concerns us here is that the theory demands
such a state of affairs, and the demand is met.

HE AXIS MUNDI

One of the most mysterious of
elements that can he retrieved from
the mytho-historical record concerning the Saturnian
configuration is what seems to have appeared, at least at first,
as a tapered swath of light which stretched all the way down from
the configuration to touch Earth at its northern horizon. Having
received the generic name of axis mundi, this appendage is also
recognized as the polar column and cosmic tree. It was even known
as the world mountain which ... is not to he confused with the
lithic bulge we have just discussed.

This tapering appendage has
been explained in various ways. Rose
compared it to the so-called flux tube which stretches between
Jupiter and its satellite, Io. In his own Martian, as opposed to
a Saturnian, model, Jueneman sees the axis as a colossal Rankine
vortex. David Talbott, on the other hand, had originally
explained the polar column as a stream of debris stretching
between Saturn and Earth, but later amended this to a stream of
debris attracted from Mars toward Earth Additionally, Wallace
Thornhill believes he has recognized this ethereal pillar as a
sustained plasma discharge in the form of Birkeland current.

AMY: Here Cardona disagrees with Talbott's interpretation on the basis
that such an occurrence would have depleted Mars of its rubble
and that Martian meteorites have not yet been found in the
northern regions of the Earth.

CARDONA:
What Thornhill's explanation has going for it...is the fact
that galaxies exhibit what Thornhill terms plasma focus
characteristics at their centre during their active, or quasar,
phase by emitting beams of particles in the form of twisted
vortices.' These vortices bear a remarkable similarity to the
posited axis mundi deduced from the mytho-historical record
Moreover, such a beam in the form of a filament of light has now
not only been detected ... but even photographed. And,
together with the beam, we now have the first actual photograph
of an extra-solar planet, a member of a double-star system known
as TMR-1. What the photograph shows is what appears to be a
runaway planet, jettisoned by the double stars together with what
has been described as 'a thin filament of gas' extending all the
way from the planet to its primaries. Anyone living on that
planet . . . would see a swath of light stretching all the way
from the horizon to the double sun very much like our ancestors
would have seen a similar swath of light stretching .. from
Earth's northern horizon to the Saturnian configuration. Those
who used to tell us that such a phenomenon is not physically
possible can now be silenced.

One other aspect of
Thornhill's postulate that fits well with the
mytho-historical record is that magnetic fields tend to twist
Birkeland currents into 'ropes,' making the structure appear like
entwined snakes. As I will indicate below, this structure is
important because, during its fina1 phase, the Saturnian axis
developed exactly that form.

AMY: Cardona then expresses his opinion that, although Thornhill's
Birkeland currents fit most of the criteria of the polar column,
they would not be able to suck material up from the earth, which
he believes the myths describe. Cardona prefers Fred Jueneman's
proposed Rankine vortex, an interplanetary tornado, as an
explanation for the axis mundi.

CARDONA:
THE WHIRLING COLUMN

Once again, I cannot here
present the entire string of evidential
sources which attest to the whirling motion of the cosmic pillar.
Instead I will merely present the opinion of four authorities on
the subject . . .

DC Santillana and von Dechend
are two of many who came to the
conclusion that the axis did twist and turn--although they seemed
somewhat unsure of whether it did so slowly or rapidly-even if to
them the axis was anything but an actual physical entity. So,
incidentally, did Elmer Suhr when he speaks of the 'whirling
cosmic column' and 'the whirling column of the cosmos.' In fact,
Suhr goes on to stress: 'It is especially important to think of
the cosmic column not as a static post but as a constantly
whirling crucible...' Talbott, of course, also recognized this
fact when he wrote that 'the cosmic mountain in many creation
epics is presented as a churning, serpentine column rising along
the world axis...'

. . . it is more than obvious
from descriptions of the Saturnian
axis, as well as prehistoric Petroglyphs, that the polar column
was a visible entity rather than a deduced abstraction. This was
so much so that, in some cases, the axis was even pictured as a
ladder reaching to the Saturnian sun.

AMY: Cardona mentioned that he finds it difficult to reconcile a the
whirling motion of the axis with Suhr's interpretation of the
cosmic pillar as the cone-shaped shadow which the moon sends to
the Earth during a solar eclipse.

CARDONA:
THE ENTWINED SERPENTS

. . . the cosmic pillar was
often described as having had the
form of a serpent or celestial dragon.... And, as [Talbott]
continues to inform us, "in several lands the word for 'mountain'
is the same as the word for 'serpent' or 'dragon,' though our
natural world offers no basis for the equivalence.' For
examples, Talbott offers the following: 'In Mexico, Nahuatl _can_
means 'serpent' but also 'mountain'... and [the] Egyptian Set is
the primordial serpent or dragon, but _set_ also means 'mountain,"
and '[the] ancient Sumerian dragon ... was the Kur...but _kur_
also possessed the meaning 'mountain"...[The Greek] Boreas is
the primeval serpent... but etymologists connect the serpent-
dragon's name with a primitive _bora_, 'mountain'."

As Suhr tells us: "Among
primitive peoples there are signs of the
column in the form of a python or dragon rising from the level of
the earth to the clouds.' In fact, Suhr adds that, among the
Murngin people of northern Australia, the great python 'is the
most impressive representative of the column.' In China '[a]
dragon ascending from the earth to the clouds can serve as the
whirling column--which no doubt accounts for so many dragons on
pillars."

A serpent, or dragon, on the
other hand, is not exactly the same
thing as a pair of entwined serpents. So, if we are going to keep
to the motif of Thornhill's Birkeland current, where do we look
to find the cosmic pillar described as a pair of entwined
serpents or, at least, a serpent entwined around a vertical
prominence? In this respect, we only have to turn our attention
to that object which the Greeks referred to as the caduceus--two
serpents entwined around a central shaft--which Suhr also
recognized as representative of the cosmic axis. Nor must we
think of the caduceus as a uniquely Greek invention since the
symbol was also popular in the east, including Mesopotamia.

A fourth century BC relief
from Greece depicts a cylindrical
altar with a snake coiled around it ... the word 'altar,'
although derived from Latin, has its phonetic equivalent in the
Arabic Al-Tur which means 'The Mountain' This connection did not
escape Talbott who has provided some intriguing insights
concerning the associations shared between the altar, the world
mountain, the cosmic pillar, and other Saturnian elements.

Other examples of this motif
are encountered in depictions of
Mithras, shown with a serpent coiled around him in spiral
fashion, and in that of the Mithraic Kronos, or Aion, who is
likewise shown within the coils of a spiraling snake. A variant
of the same motif is to be found in the serpent-footed Yahweh on
coins of the Hellenistic period ... Yahweh originated as a
personification of Saturn ... As Heidel tells us: 'That Yahweh
and Saturn were identical was a belief widely accepted in
antiquity...' This can be verified through Tacitus who had it
recorded that the Jews worshipped the planet Saturn as their god.
I mention all this, here, because the image of Yahweh reproduced
on the coins mentioned above do not merely show him as serpent-
footed, but with both serpentine legs entwined together, thus
conforming to the demands of our model.

... Since we have opted for
Jueneman's Rankine vortex in lieu
of Thornhill's Birkeland current--at least temporarily--how do
we account for the image of the serpentine nature under this
scheme? The answer is easy enough. As Jueneman himself
explained:

"Terrestrial tornadoes
occasionally exhibit smaller counter-
rotating vortices in close ... proximity to the primary
whirlwind. 0n a much vaster scale, similar counter-rotating
catenulate bolus flows would have snaked around the polar
column in filamentary fashion, first in a
counterclockwise, then in a clockwise direction in a slow
oscillation."

It is, therefore, this bolus
flow that would have given the
planetary tornado, or Rankine vortex, its serpentine quality.

THE WATERY VORTEX

AMY: Cardona proposes, if the polar column were actually a colossal
tornado, that the Saturn theory demands that this, too, should be
part of the mytho-historical record. That is, the tornado would
have sucked large amounts of waters from the Earth and ancient
man should have been aware of this, if not from observing the
column itself, then at least from observing what happened when
the column was severed.

CARDONA:
. . .
among the Australian Aborigines, the great python is the
most impressive representative of the polar column. It is
therefore significant that this python is not only believed to
tower up to the level of the clouds, but that he also 'brings
about rain and flood.' The Efe pygmies of the Ituri forest tell
of a deluge of water which gushed forth as a mighty river when
their version of the Cosmic Tree, which was the polar column, was
felled. Similarly, the Arawak Indians of the Guinas tell of a
wondrous tree which Sigu cut down. From its stump, water gushed
out in such quantity as to cause a deluge. This tale is also
found among the traditions of the Cuna, who tell of their
mischief-maker, the Tapir, chopping down the Saltwater Tree from
which salt water gushed out to form the oceans of the world.
Thus, Velikovsky was correct when he surmised that the water of
the Deluge would have been salty, but not, as he believed,
because the salt, or at least its chlorine content, originated
from Saturn. The water was salty because it came from the same
oceanic water the vortex had sucked up in the first place.

THE FLOOD FROM THE NORTH

AMY: Cardona moves on to the next demand of the Saturn Theory. If the
Deluge was the result of the collapse of a colossal tornado
situated in the north, then the mytho-historical record must also
contain this information. And it does. Among others, three
American Indian tribes, the Wintus, the Wichita, and the Pawnee,
tell different legends of the flood, but in each case the deluge
arrives from the north.

CARDONA:
But what of the hard sciences? Is the evidence there?

Once again, I can only mention
a few items here, but that an
enormous flood had once swept down from the north to scour the
land surface of North America has been suggested by J. Harlan
Bretz. So, similarly, with C. Warren Hunt who speaks of evidence
pointing to a flood from the north, excavating the land as it
went before it emptied into Lake Bonneville. That Lake Bonneville
itself also burst its bounds to cause a secondary flood has been
documented by Robert Jarred and Harold Malde. What is of
additional interest here is that the area once covered by this
lake constitutes a vast salt deposit 100 square miles in extent.
Similar signs of a vast scouring flood from the north have also
been discovered in Siberia.

It is, of course, theorized
that this flood was due to the
catastrophic melting of the northern ice cap at the end of the
Ice Age. I, on the other hand, claim that, at this time, the
northern ice cap had not yet been formed.

THE CHURNING OF THE OCEAN

One of the most dramatic
images of the concept under discussion,
and one which brings various of our motifs together in one place,
is invoked by the Indic myth, from the Mahabharata and the
Bhagavata Purana, concerning the production of amrita (or
ambrosia). In brief the myth is this: In an effort to produce
this divine nectar, both gods and demons used Mount Mandara as a
churning stick. Winding the serpent Vasuki, also known as Ananta,
around Mount Mandara, the gods (at one end) and the demons (at
the other) grasped hold of Vasuki by the head and tail and,
pulling him back and forth, were able to rotate Mount Mandara
fast enough to whisk the sea into an ocean of milk from which
amrita was produced.

Now, to be sure, in most
visual representations of the myth in
question, Mount Mara is depicted not in the form of a mountain,
but in that of a pillar, thus validating our conviction that the
mythic World Mountain and the Axis Mundi were one and the same.
In fact, it has long been known to Indologists that Mount Mandara
stood for the axis of the world. The second thing we notice is
hardly worth mentioning, and that is that this cosmic pillar did
twist and churn. In Vasuki we recognize the bolus flow wrapped
around the central vortex -- and here it is interesting to note
that this entity was 'associated with the north,' thus locating
the entire action in that locality. Finally, in the divinities'
churning by pulling at the coiled Vasuki this way and that way,
an echo is retained of the clockwise/counterclockwise rotation of
the bolus flow as described by Jueneman.

The elements contained in the
myth of the churning of the ocean
must not be thought of as uniquely Hindu in origin. In the Hindu
myth, for instance, we see that Mandara was placed on the back of
a tortoise. In Chinese mythology, it is Shang-ti who is depicted
as standing on the celestial tortoise, while the serpent was said
to have encircled the tortoise. Shang-ti's title was The Holy
and Propitious Prince of the North Pole, who is usually
represented as surrounded by a halo, both of which have special
meaning to this study. It is also noteworthy that the symbolism
of the tortoise and serpent goes at least as far back as the Han
dynasty and was used as an emblem for the northern region of the
world. More than that, as Lord of the Centre, Shang-ti was also
revered as Huang-ti, who is perhaps better known as the Yellow
Lord or Yellow Emperor. The Yellow Emperor has long been
acknowledged to be an avatar of Saturn.

And in the Japanese Kojiki we
learn of the Heavenly Jeweled Spear
which joined heaven to Earth and which acted as the churning
stick responsible for the surfacing of the mythical -- one might
as well say celestial -- island of Onogoro.

AMY ACHESON:
Part I of this paper recounted many of the unusual global
attributes of the planet/god Saturn as portrayed in mytho-
historical records from all over the world. Among these were
Saturn's connection with an age of darkness, Saturn as supreme
ruler of The Golden Age, Saturn's association with the beginning
of time, Saturn as motionless, Saturn as the sun and Saturn as
the sun of night.

Part II concerned the
postulate that the mytho-historical record
places Saturn at the Earth's north pole. Cardona stresses that
this information is not taken from a single story, but is
expressed in hundreds of different ways in hundreds of different
stories told over the world.

Part III discussed the lithic
bulge as a physical remnant of a
recent, short-term force acting in the direction of Earth's north
pole. Cardona presented mytho-historical evidence for a polar
column at Earth's north pole and discussed the theoretical
interpretations of several catastrophists. He expressed his
personal preference of interpreting the polar column as a Rankine
vortex.

Part IV concludes this paper.

CARDONA:
THE ARCTIC CARNAGE
Meanwhile, does not this scenario, involving a tornado of
planetary proportions, raise even more demands? . . . we are all
acquainted with the destructive force that tornadoes exhibit.
Should not Saturn's Rankine vortex, therefore, have left signs of
an even greater destruction? This would have been especially so
since this titanic maelstrom would have wrought its devastation
while laterally standing still.

A full exposition concerning the history of the axis mundi
requires a volume [by itself]. . . . I point to . . . the Arctic
muck, or frozen soil, which 'covers no less than one seventh of
the land surface of earth,' all of which encircles the Arctic
Ocean and lies within the Arctic Circle. Composed mainly of silt,
sand, pebbles, and boulders, it is often accompanied by
'preserved, semi-decayed, or fully decayed vegetable and animal
matter.' Its depth, in some places, 'has always caused even the
most open-minded geologists to boggle.' The Russians, who have
conducted prolonged studies on this muck, have in some places
drilled down to more than 4000 feet without reaching rock bottom.
Entire forests have been found buried in this area, including
plum trees complete with their leaves and fruits, to say nothing
of palm trees and huge exotic ferns. . . . animals [have been]
found buried in this muck, the most noteworthy and famous of
which, needless to say, is the mammoth. Let's face it, as George
Gaylord Simpson was astute enough to realize, catastrophic events
at the end of the Pleistocene were not only much more severe in
North than in South America, they also affected a much larger
proportion of animals.

AMY: Cardona quotes various researchers defining the puzzle of how so
much surface material could have been transported so far and
piled so deep, with no apparent highland source or sufficient
drainage.

CARDONA:
. . .
But consider now the model being discussed and tested.
Would not such a colossal vortex as posited above have scoured
the land, year-in year-out, uprooting . . . trees . . . sizable
chunks of rock, [and] boulders, which would have swirled around,
grinding relentlessly against each other; breaking apart into
ever smaller pieces, and smaller still until ground into sand and
silt? And what is the area that is now filled with the Arctic
Ocean if not an immense basin scoured out of the living rock?

AMY: Cardona describes the Arctic muck of Siberia, Alaska and the
Arctic islands, emphasizing the "vast remains of torn and broken
mammoths" as "evidence of an atmospheric tempest of unprecedented
dimensions."

CARDONA:
. . .
Entire forests in an uprooted condition, bituminous trunks
and fossilized charcoal, are everywhere intermingled with
petrified ash, and veins of ice, and sand that has turned into
sandstone. Among this colossal devastation are found the
skeletons of mammoths, rhinoceroses, bison, and horses.

AMY: Cardona compares his own thesis to other catastrophic theories,
and especially to the non-polar theories, concluding that:

CARDONA:
. . .
on this topic, I have the additional evidence of the mytho-historical record on my side-as the theory, in fact,
continues to demand. What is this evidence? Does it, for
instance, have anything to say re the catastrophic demise of the
mammoths in the north?

. . . Are elephants [mammoths] . . . mentioned in the record in
connection with the polar vortex? In the Mahabharata we read that
Mandara, that churning mountain, was 'crowded with tusked
animals.' Moreover, when the churning began, . . . great trees
spun off, were crushed against one another, lightning flashed
forth, a fire blazed burning the elephants and other beasts, 'and
all the various creatures there lost their life's breath.' The
water pouring from above eventually dowsed the fire and flowed
into the ocean. Thus we can see that we have here the entire
spectrum of the devastation -- the whirlwind, the uprooted
forest, the carnage, the fire, and the ensuing flood. Does this
not tally with is found in Earth's northern regions?

CARDONA:
. . .
But in the end, when the planets were displaced from their
polar alignment, the funnel of the polar column was dislodged
from its axial locus. Swirling now in corkscrew fashion, writhing
like a serpent in travail, it went berserk and overstepped the
bounds within which it had been contained for ages. Taken
unawares, beasts fell prone to it. Man, apparently, was just
that much smarter.

THE ONSLAUGHT OF ICE

The penultimate question I wish to raise concerns the freezing of
the . . . Arctic muck or permafrost. How did it all freeze? Where
did the ice come from? . . . Is it traceable to the planet Saturn
or Earth's primeval position in relation to Saturn? Can this
demand also be met?

This is an easy question to answer. The Greeks, for instance, had
long associated . . . Saturn, with snow and hail. In fact, Saturn
was renowned for being 'cold' and 'moist.' This seemingly-odd
belief is not met only among the Greeks. Abu Ma'sar also had it
stated that Saturn's nature is cold. . . . Alcabitius likewise
recorded that 'he [Saturn] is bad, masculine, in daytime cold...'
Epigenes of Byzantium classified Saturn as 'cold and windy.'
Dorotheus also talks of 'cold Saturn.' Pliny wrote that 'Saturn
is of a cold and frozen nature,' while Virgil spoke of 'Saturn's
cold star.' We can thus be close to certain that when the Zunis
of New Mexico refer to Awonawilona as having also been associated
with cold, they were reiterating an archaic testimonial
concerning the planet Saturn's affiliation with snow and ice.
This is all the more made clear since Awonawilona means All-
Father Father, an epithet which elsewhere was reserved for the
Saturnian deity. Thus Kronos/Saturn was referred to as First
Father, while Odin was known as All-father, the very same name of
the Zuni Awonawilona.

Mythologists have never been able to supply a convincing theory
to explain why the planet Saturn and its deity should be
associated with cold, snow, and ice. A telling clue comes from
William of Conches who tells us that 'Saturn is called cold not
because he is inherently cold himself but because he causes
cold.'

AMY: Cardona discusses this connection between Saturn and cold with
respect to the Greek and Persian mytho-historical record, and
then adds this story told by the Modoc Indians of southern Oregon
and northern California:

CARDONA:
. . .
the Chief of the Sky Spirits drilled a hole in the sky
with a rotating stone through which he pushed snow and ice to
form a mound which almost touched the sky. . . . the drilling of
the sky with a rotating stone is too similar to the churning of
the ocean by Mount Madara to escape our notice. Destruction of
the world by cold is also met with among the marginal, forest,
and southern Andean peoples. As Dolph Hooker informs us:

". . . we cannot find evidence that Earth's climate grew cold
before the advent of an ice age; . . . on the contrary, climate
grew colder only after the ice arrived and only to the extent
that the ice itself refrigerated the Earth..."

. . . As Hooker also tells us: "Obviously the perma-frost
accumulated from the bottom upward--not by freezing from the top
downward.' What this means is that the detritus which forms the
permafrost was frozen as it was being laid down.

Am I here advocating that the ice which caused the so-called Ice
Age came from the planet Saturn? Not really. What I am claiming
is that the snow, ice, and sleet came from the axial vortex when
it was severed for the last time because that is where a vast
quantity of terrestrial moisture had been stored. But why, and
how, then did it freeze to fall as snow, and ice, and sleet? As
mentioned earlier, this all transpired during the break-up of the
Saturnian configuration. Saturn, Venus, and Mars were thrown out
of axial alignment. And so was Earth. Its axis shifted to take up
the alignment it now possesses. Do we find this also contained in
the mytho-historical record? Is this demand also met?

EARTH'S SHIFTING AXIS

. . . The Muria, a tribe of the Bastar State in the Central
Provinces of India . . . tell without ambiguity how Mahapurub
turned the world topsy-turvy. . . . [the record] of the Hopi . .
. is one of the best to illustrate the subject under discussion.
As these Indians narrate:

'. . . .the world, with no one to control it, teetered off
balance, spun around crazily, then rolled over twice. Mountains
plunged into seas with a great splash, seas and lakes sloshed
over the land; and as the world spun through cold and lifeless
space it froze into solid ice..'

How would these Indians have known that the teetering of the
world would cause seas and lakes to slosh over the land? How
would they have known that a shifting of earth's axis could
freeze it into solid ice?

Actually, had I any faith in the accuracy of counting the annual
layers of ice retrieved in cores drilled out of Greenland's ice
fields, I would even be able to date the event for you.

SATURN'S DEPARTURE

. . . I do not need to tell that Saturn is no longer in Earth's
proximity. The theory then demands that somewhere in the record
Saturn's removal from Earth's proximity should be encountered.
And so we find as, for example, with the tale of Quetzelcoatl,
whose 'paladins' died from the cold through the snow that fell
upon them just before the god took off on his serpent raft to be
seen no more. I mention this one myth because, as one can see, it
ties in nicely with Saturn's removal at the very time when Earth,
teetering off balance, was deluged with the onslaught of ice that
ushered in the so-called Ice Age.

. . . having said so much about the Egyptian Ra toward the
beginning of this treatise, it should perhaps be fitting for me
to end with him. Thus, in an Egyptian myth, Ra is made to say:

'Weary indeed are my limbs and they fail me. I shall go forth...
Henceforth my dwelling place must be in the heavens. No longer
will I reign upon the earth.' And: 'I have determined to cause
myself to be uplifted into the sky, to join the blessed gods and
to renounce rule of the world'

. . . Then Ra raised himself from the back of the goddess Nut
into the sky.

So here I must ask: if Ra was truly the Sun, where had it been
prior to its ascent into the sky? And if, as mythologists tell
us, Nut was the goddess of the sky, what would it mean that the
Sun rose from the back of the sky (i.e. Nut) into the sky? What
does it mean that, before ascending into the sky, the Sun had
reigned upon Earth? What does it mean that the Sun once ruled
the world? Do we not, in fact, find it stated in an Orphic
fragment that 'Saturn dwelt openly on earth among men'? So,
also, Dionysus of Halicarnassus who declared that 'Kronos ruled
on this very earth.' Besides, as it was written, when Ra removed
himself into the sky, 'darkness came on' and 'Ra was borne
through darkness.' Does this make sense if Ra was the Sun? Do we
see darkness coming on when the Sun rises into the sky? The
answer to this mystery is that the sun of night, which had ruled
Earth due to its proximity, had now removed itself into the
blackness of space. True night, as we now know it, finally
descended upon the world. And the stars, which could not have
been seen as long as the Saturnian sun of night was shining down
on Earth, appeared in all their brilliance for the first time.
Do we find this stated in the mytho-historical record? Can this
last demand be met? As it is written:

"[When Ra left Earth he] went on his way through the realms which
are above, and these he divided and set in order. He spake
creating words, and called into existence the field of Aalu, and there
he caused to assemble a multitude of beings which are beheld in heaven,
even the stars..."